36

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust

Having said as much, it seems clear that, in the age of Enframing, people seem more
and more amenable to the possibility of looking on other people as nothing more than
resources to be used or waste to be disposed of. Whats more, we can see again from
this discovery, as recounted by Hss, that the primary considerations were efficiency
and productivity which were to be maximized; they wished to make the process
as straightforward and stress-free as possible for both the executioner and those
marked by the Nazi regime for death:
Now I was at ease. We were all saved from these bloodbaths, and the victims
would be spared until the last moment. This is what I worried about the most
when I thought of Eichmanns accounts of the mowing down of the Jews with
machine guns and pistols by the Einsatzgruppe. Horrible scenes were supposed
to have occurred: people running away even after being shot, the killing of those
who were only wounded, especially the women and children. Another thing on
my mind was the many suicides among the ranks of the SS Special Action Squads
who could no longer mentally endure wading in the bloodbath. Some of them
went mad. Most of the members of the Special Action Squads drank a great deal
to help get through this horrible work.26

The other major consideration was of course the disposal of the corpses which would
now tax the camps resources more than ever before. Due to the high mortality rates at
many of these installations, a number of systems were already in place for the disposal
of bodies including mass graves, open pit burnings and crematoria. Eventually, when
the Final Solution was at full tilt, so to speak, it became clear that the burning of the
bodies in furnaces reducing them to ash was the obvious solution. To this end, Topf
& Sons and other manufacturing firms vigorously lobbied for lucrative contracts for
the numerous furnaces with nauseating rapacity. Indeed as one reads some of the
correspondence between Topf & Sons chief engineer, Kurt Prfer, and Nazi officials
such as Karl Bischoff, one cannot help but be astounded by the sheer scale of their
objectives as they blithely discuss the need for greater productivity to be achieved
by larger ovens with increased capacity. And, as one scans the figures, one realizes that
once the genocidal juggernaut was in top gear, the only real considerations for these
people revolved around efficiency and productivity:
On 22nd October Prfer met the new head of the Bauleitung (Construction
Management) at Auschwitz, SS Captain Karl Bischoff. The SS wanted to build
another crematorium in the camp, considering that Krematorium I, even with
6 muffles, would soon reach saturation point. Bischoff was well-placed to know
this because he had been posted to Auschwitz to build a POW camp [KGL] (for
Russian prisoners) to hold 125,000 men. The site chosen was Birkenau, flat land,
but marshy and therefore requiring drainage. The working conditions and then
living conditions were terrible and were to remain so. The result was an extremely
high mortality rate, which required a modern and efficient crematorium. Bischoff
was not yet sure where the new crematorium would be located, but in his conversation with Prfer it was to be in the main camp. On 30th October, it was included
in the estimates for the POW camp, at Birkenau. Wherever the location was to